Post-earthquake functional recovery: A critical review

Abstract

Functional recovery not only transforms the retrofit of damaged buildings from an earthquake event but also contributes to community resilience. This paper aims to provide a state-of-the-art literature review of functional recovery research, with a focus on identifying the key factors affecting the restoration of post-earthquake functionality and implications of functional recovery for multi-storey buildings in the New Zealand context. It starts by reviewing research related to building resilience and recovery, followed by existing methodologies for quantifying functional recovery. It shows that the factors that affect the process and outcome of functional recovery fall into four categories, namely, 1) seismic resilience of the building itself, 2) resourcing for building repairs, 3) social and organisational preparedness and 4) governance. It is hoped that the introduction of functional recovery notion and methodology will not only influence the decision making of restoring those damaged buildings with residual capacity after an earthquake, but also will inform the changes in engineering design practice with whole-life cycle functionality taken into consideration.